Search

Contamination of a portion of this year's cranberry crop dramatizes hazards which accompany the growing use of chemical pesticides. Yet the danger revealed by the incident is not, in the long run, the basic one involved in the use of pesticides, and to that extent our alarm is misdirected. Traditionally, man has resisted the onslaughts of competing animals and plants with the crudest of measures. Although our experience with these chemicals has been brief, it has also been intense and greatly varied. Most of this emphasis has centered on chemicals alone. A common belief is that solution of hazard problems will also solve pest-control problems. This is by no means true.